Airborn

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
This book is a Michael Printz Honor Book.

Matt Cruse is living the life he has always dreamed of, working on an Airship.   The Aurora is a luxury ship that sails hundreds of feet above the ocean. Matt works as a cabin boy, but hopes one day to be a sailmaker. One night he helps rescue a dying balloonist and hears about the beautiful creatures who drift in the skies almost like angels.  He keeps hoping that he will see these creatures one day.

Several months later, a passenger named Kate de Viers, asks Matt about an older gentleman who was brought on board but later died.  Matt had been there to talk to him before he died and she wanted to know what was said.  He was her grandfather and she missed him very much.  Mostly she wanted to know what he said about the last few days before he died.  Matt couldn't tell her much.  She was anxious to learn more about the cloud creatures that her grandfather saw.  That night pirates boarded the Aurora and were about to take off after looting the passengers when  a storm hit.  In an attempt to take off from the ship, the pirates cut holes in the structure of the airship and she started to lose ground.  They landed on an island to repair the ship and Kate figured out that this was the place the cloud creatures were last seen.  They start exploring and find the skeleton of one of the creatures.  The look for signs of life of one of them and find a large nest.  The creature that fell to earth being born survived.

Matt, Kate and Lundardi set out to find the live "cloud cat".  Once it was found they tried to get pictures of it but Lundardi was attacked and had to run for it.  Kate and Matt also stumble into the camp of the pirates who live on the island.  They almost get away but the pirates board them again.  They mean to take the ship down and ruin her.  Matt and Kate find a way to take down the pirates one at a time to save the ship. 


An overall enjoyable book that takes you on an adventure you could never dream of having.  The sky was their portal to the wonderful scenery and breathtaking vistas that were described in the book.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox

by Mary E. Pearson

Jenna Fox is a seventeen-year-old girl who is recovering from a life threatening accident that killed both of her friends, Kara & Locke.  Her memory is almost non-existent and she struggles with that knowledge.  Her days are taken up with watching videos of her life from newborn to just before the accident.  She doesn't understand why she walks funny, why she can't go to school, and why her parents don't want her to go out of the house.  She finally convinces her parents to allow her to go to a school, but the school is just a village charter that caters to students who don't really fit in anywhere else.  She meets Ethan, Allys, Gabriel and Dane.  She works on a project with Ethan at the mission. Jenna also meets her neighbor Mr. Bender, who seems something different than what he is supposed to be. 

Jenna's memory gradually comes back to her and she feels that she is being kept in the dark about what really happened to her.  She finds a key in her mother's room to a closet that contains three computers.  One of them is labeled Jenna Fox.  She wonders what they are for but is afraid to ask her parents about them.  She finally figures out that she is way too many points over the limit in transplants.  When she confronts her parents about her knowledge, they convince her not to say anything.  The knowledge would not only affect them but many people who were in on the operations.  Allys finds out about her transplants and tells her parents to turn them in.  Allys gets sick and almost dies, but her parents come to Jenna's parents and she is helped with the bio-gel that saved Jenna.

Jenna lives to be over 260 years old.  She has Allys as a companion.  She had married Ethan and he was around for 70 years.  Not long after Ethan died, Jenna arranged to get a daughter, Kayla.  Kayla has many attributes of Ethan, but has Jenna's eyes.  Jenna decides that she will go to the cold of Boston when it is time to die, because no parent should outlive her child.